A mobile station typically has access to cellular radio frequency bandwidth offering data transfer speeds in the range of 28.8 kilobits per second to 144 kilobits per second. In general, the bandwidth available to mobile stations is an order of magnitude less than the bandwidth available to standard office computer equipment such as desktop personal computers and laptop personal computers using so-called “wireline” networking technologies.
There exists a class of mobile stations, such as personal digital assistants (PDAs), cellular phones and so-called “smart” phones, that can operate when connected to a (remote) wireless network as well as when connected (cradled) to office computer equipment that is connected to a (local) wireline network. When connected to office computer equipment, it is common for local software, executed on the office computer equipment, to facilitate the retrieval of data for use by a given mobile station by requesting synchronization with (i.e., pulling data from) a server of such data and subsequently for the given mobile station to synchronize with the local software.
A subset of the mobile stations may be configured to receive unsolicited data over a wireless network from so-called “push” applications.
Clearly, it would be beneficial to improve the availability of higher bandwidth connections (for instance, local network connections to standard office computer equipment) to mobile stations, especially for receiving unsolicited data from push applications.